Account Settings: merge 'Comment Pages' option with 'Entry View Style' option

[ninetydegrees]

Title:
Account Settings: merge 'Comment Pages' option with 'Entry View Style' option

Area:
settings

Summary:
See below as it's quite complicated.

Description:
On Account Settings [http://www.dreamwidth.org/manage/settings/?cat=display], you have two options:

1- Comment Pages - View comment pages in your own journal style

This is the option DW inherited from LiveJournal.

When enabled, clicking on 'Leave a comment', 'Read comments', a permalink or a cut anywhere on the site will append style=mine to the target URL. Comment and reply pages get therefore loaded in your own style or the site skin if you've disabled custom comment pages.


2- Entry View Style - When viewing entry pages (including yours), use this style: Original Style/Site Skin/My own style/Light format

This is the new option Dreamwidth implemented.

When enabled, comment and reply pages always get loaded in the style you've chosen. This is also transparent as nothing gets added to the URL. Magic!


As you can see, the two options are very similar and even overlap in some cases*. The main difference between the two is that option 1 requires you to click on some specific links while option 2 doesn't. If someone links to an entry page in their post and you click on the link, option 1 will not load it in your style. Option 2 will. If you click on the cut text, both options will load the entry in your style. The other difference is that one changes the URL while the other doesn't.

*To prevent this, option 2 isn't used when option 1 is and vice-versa. Except not always. If you have selected the light format for option 2 then it overrides option 1 for instance. As I said, it's complicated.


I suggest the first option to be phased out and to automatically set option 2 to 'my own style' for users who had checked option 1.


Why? I think option 1 seems simple but is actually uselessly complicated, and having these two options seems confusing to me. I also wonder whether many people chose to set 1 but not 2 and did so deliberately. From comments I've seen here and there, some people don't understand that entry pages and comment pages are one and the same, plus the description text for the the first option is vague because explaining how this option works exactly is impossible. It gets even more complicated if you add the fact that once you've got style=mine added to an URL, you're stuck with it so any link you will click on the page will get style=mine too. And let's not talk about Nav Strip overrides.


But what do I know, right? Hence this suggestion to see if it's a good or a terrible idea, and also to know why someone would deliberately use option 1 and not option 2 because it's intriguing. *g*

Poll #7847 Account Settings: merge 'Comment Pages' option with 'Entry View Style' option

Open to: Registered Users, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 45

View Respondents

This suggestion:

View Answers

Should be implemented as-is.
24 (53.3%)

Should be implemented with changes. (please comment)
1 (2.2%)

Shouldn't be implemented.
5 (11.1%)

(I have no opinion)
14 (31.1%)

(Other: please comment)
1 (2.2%)

Comments

[montuos]

I personally am not as painfully sensitive to the styles and color combos or as prone to headaches/migraines as archane describes (and it's far more likely to be animated gifs that set me off when I'm in a sensitive state), but I know enough people who are that I feel it ought to be treated as an accessibility issue for the site, rather than a one-on-one fix if one is geeky enough to manage it.

I'm not terribly comfortable with S2, either, so I'd need a pretty detailed "copy this exactly" to follow, at which point you might as well...would you consider writing something up to publish somewhere like dw_nifty so it could be available to more people?